


Until You Come Back To Us

by LaShaRa



Series: Snapshots [3]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012), DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Angst, Barry Allen Needs a Hug, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fix-It of Sorts, Happy Ending, Leonard Snart Lives, Mick Rory Defense Squad, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-16
Updated: 2017-01-19
Packaged: 2018-09-17 23:17:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9350582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaShaRa/pseuds/LaShaRa
Summary: Len would like to give Mick a hug now.Except, well, Len’s a little dead at the moment.Mick and Barry are grieving, and there's not a damn thing Leonard Snart can do about it, but he hadn't counted on what the two of them could do for each other.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Goddesstio](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Goddesstio/gifts).



> Because I am still not over, and never will be over, the undeserved death of Leonard Snart. For Goddesstio, because they've written some of my favourite hurt/comfort scenes of all time.

Len would like to give Mick a hug now.

Except, well, Len’s a little dead at the moment. And not at all corporeal.

He doesn’t quite understand how he’s still here, given the above, but he’ll figure that part out later.

For the moment, he transfers his attention from Mick to Barry. Like Mick, Barry is very much corporeal. Barry is also very much upset, although he’s trying to forget about it by burying his nose in a book. Len had been there – how he’d gotten there in the first place, he has absolutely no idea – when Barry had snuck over to Palmer and asked, keeping his voice quiet like that would hide the worry and apprehension in it, “Where’s Snart?” And Palmer had delivered his little spiel about sacrifice and heroics, almost like he was reciting from Len’s tombstone – not that he had one – and Len had watched the light fade out of Barry’s eyes, heard himself called a legend, watched his mouth morph back into that sad, angry little line it had been for most of what Len had seen of this so-called superhero team-up to fight the goddamn aliens.

(Seriously. Aliens. Dinosaurs, ninjas and aliens. Of course he dies just in time to miss all the fun.)

Barry’s attention, however, keeps straying from his book to Mick. Len doesn’t blame him. Even slumped uncomfortably in a rickety folding chair, knocking back his third bottle of beer, his clothes alternately hanging loose and stretched tight in all the wrong places, and some uncharacteristically untidy stubble darkening his jaw, Mick’s a sight for sore eyes, and definitely the only person around who’s feeling the exact same thing as Barry. Mick finishes off the bottle, dumps it on the ground, and looks up abruptly - Barry ducks. Mick’s eyes roam over him, taking in all the details – the black cap stuck on backwards, the open backpack with a set of what look an awful lot like textbooks sticking out, the empty takeout boxes – which could easily make a passerby think he was just another half-starved college nerd. Of course, the fact that Barry’s wearing a black T-shirt and the bottom half of his Flash suit, along with those red boots that provoked many a fantasy in Len’s mind – both pre and post-mortem – might get in the way. It’s a little hard to tell under all that beard, but Mick’s mouth twitches briefly into something that might almost be a smile. “Cramming, Scarlet?”

Mick’s nicknames for Barry were always a lot more detailed and illustrative; that one’s all Len’s. Len doesn’t think he has lungs anymore, but he still needs to take a deep breath when Mick uses it.

For a moment Barry looks like he might be having the same reaction, but then he grins, tentatively. “No, not really – there’s this new book I’ve been wanting to read, a lot of science-fiction stuff, just to see, you know, how close it is to the truth - ”

Mick grunts, the pseudo-smile dropping away, clearly imagining he’s in for one of those rants delivered in a superior tone by the privileged educated (see: Ray, Stein, Nate). Barry’s mouth snaps shut. There’s a silence, and then he blurts out, “I’m sorry about Snart.”

“Nothing to be sorry ‘bout,” snorts Mick, picking up an empty beer bottle and squinting into it. “’Round here dyin’ only matters if you get murdered, and the bastard committed suicide, so it ain’t important.”

Barry’s eyes narrow. Len hasn’t really seen that look since he died and didn’t go anywhere, and he’d forgotten how mildly terrifying it was. “Who told you that?”

Mick doesn’t reply, but Barry’s eyes lift and stare over his head at the hangar where the hero-squad is doing…whatever the hell it is that they don’t need either Barry or Mick for, which rules out the heroics and the dirty work and leaves not a lot.

“Do you want to go somewhere?”

Len raises what used to be his eyebrows and sees Mick do the same. “Haven’t you heard, kid? Aliens’re coming.”

“After we deal with them,” says Barry, and Len hates him just a little for being able to say it so casually, but not much, because this is the first time since he died - and maybe even before that, he’s not proud of it, but he’s man enough, theoretically speaking, to admit it - that anyone’s asked Mick a question beginning with “Do you want to.”

Mick, however, seems almost amused. “And where exactly am I gonna fit in when you’re getting it on with your new girlfriend?” he asks, in an impressive imitation of Len’s very own drawl. “She’s foxy and all, but I really don’t think she’s up for a threesome just yet.”

Barry flushes as red as his pants. “That’s not – we’re not – Iris and I aren’t together.”

Huh, muses Len. Interesting. He really should have found a way to drop in on Barry earlier.

Mick waves the beer bottle around vaguely. “Sure I heard Glasses Blondie - ”

“ – Felicity - ”

“- whoever, pretty sure I heard her talking to you about her - ”

“Yeah, well, we’re not together – anymore, anyway – and oh my god, that isn’t even why I asked,” says Barry desperately. “I just – maybe we can get a drink, you know? I mean, I know that we’ve beaten the crap out of each other and all that, and Cold – Snart – would probably react so badly to this - ”

Len is, in fact, reacting to this, but he wouldn’t say it was bad, just that he didn’t think he could have this reaction without the necessary equipment.

“ – but, maybe we could just get some pizza? And this is going to sound so crazy, but maybe you and I could – just talk?”

About him.

Barry doesn’t need to say the words. Len can see them all tangled up in the pain in his eyes, even from here, wherever here is. And maybe Mick can too, because for once the expression on his face isn’t black humour or fire-hunger or broken-heartedness, but something which might once have been compassion, before Len died, before time-travel fucked them over, before the fire, back when a dirty cop’s pickpocket kid woke up sobbing in a dark juvie cell. “Yeah, Scarlet,” he says, and his voice is quiet. “Yeah, maybe we’ll do that.”

-

By the time the aliens have fled, Len has the mother of all migraines, and that’s just not fair, because He’s. Fucking. Supposed To Be. Dead. He’s spent the night being tossed from Mick to Barry with no warning whatsoever, and he’s beginning to think that where he ends up depends on whoever’s having the strongest emotional reaction involving him at the moment. The reason he’s taken so long to figure it out is between Sara discovering the Black Canary was dead and Barry discovering Len was dead, and Lisa knowing absolutely nothing, Mick was the only person in the universe who gave a shit. Last night, though, Len’s spent curled invisibly around Mick while he shudders through nightmare after nightmare, no doubt sparked by the bout of alien mind control – of course that had to be their weapon of choice – and wakes up sobbing for Len in the little box of a room provided by Star Labs. When Mick isn’t being consumed by nightmares, Len finds himself watching Barry trying to run himself to sleep in the pipeline back at Star Labs proper, breaking off occasionally to hammer a training dummy to pieces with tiny angry sobs. 

And let’s not even start on everything that screams through Len’s heart when Barry tries to give himself up and Mick has to tell him, “When you got a crew, you don’t take a hit for the rest,” with something dark and lost in his eyes.

It’s pure fury, though, that screams through him as he watches Mick wander aimlessly around the superhero after-party once it’s all over, betrayal that aches through him as he sees Barry hug Oliver Queen and the alien from another Earth with a glass in his hand and a grin on his face while Mick slips outside. Len follows, seething, as Mick trudges across the parking lot towards a dirt road leading towards the far-distant Central City skyline. How Mick’s going to walk the near thirty miles back to Central Len has no idea, especially after the physical exertion and strain of the last few days, but after Mick’s gone half a mile it’s clear that he hasn’t thought this through. He’s staggering, one hand on the holster for the heat gun like it’s a crutch, his breathing ragged, and Len’s cursing his life choices – or his most recent not-life choice – for the fifty-six millionth time when there’s a flash of lightning, a blur of scenery and suddenly Len’s hovering above an alleyway in downtown Central, Mick’s on the ground vomiting, and Barry’s dancing around trying to stamp the flames out of his Converse. “Shit! Shit! Shit!”

Mick hauls himself up and looks down at his slightly smoking jacket. “I’m on fire,” he remarks. “Awesome. Let’s do that again.”

“Sorry,” mutters Barry, as Mick shrugs out of his jacket and beats it against a dumpster. “It wasn’t easy ditching Oliver and I guess I got carried away.”

“Who got carried away?”

“I said I was sorry!”

“Don’t know why you bothered, Scarlet,” grunts Mick. “Ain’t like you’ll be doin’ anything with me you couldn’t do with them.” He shrugs his jacket back on. “Now if you don’t mind, I’m going to head over to a favourite club of mine, and I’m afraid they don’t let in anyone who looks like they haven’t got spots yet. Thanks for the lift, though.”

There’s another flash, another blur, and they’re outside Saints and Sinners. Mick glares. “Cute.”

Len misses that glare.

Barry shrugs unapologetically and pulls open the door. “First drink’s on me.”

Predictably, Mick shakes his head. “Not in there,” he mutters. “We’ll go to our – my place. Normal person speed this time. Pick up some stuff on the way. You’re paying.”

Barry looks a little stunned, as if he wasn’t really expecting Mick to go along with the plan, but falls into step beside him anyway. One disastrous/successful shopping trip later – it all depends on how sympathetic you are to shop assistants who have no eyebrows after daring to tell Mick that day-old tomatoes were actually freshly-picked – Len’s following the two of them into the last safe house they inhabited before Rip Hunter came along. Mick stops dead the moment he flips the switch at the bottom of the stairs and Len can tell that Barry walking into his back is the only thing that stops him from bolting then and there. The space is a shambles, littered with things from the last days of their time here – cobwebbed beer bottles, rusting spare parts and scrap metal, one of Len’s magazines face down on the couch. It all smells of decay and cold iron and dust and the dregs of the two of them. Mick exhales. “Mind doin’ some cleaning up, Scarlet?”

Barry takes one look at Mick’s face and takes off; within about three seconds it’s like they’re somewhere completely different. Len’s a little dizzy from all the moving around, but he sends Barry a silent thank you anyway. Mick’s quiet as he gets started with the cooking, and Len worries until he sees the way Mick’s hands grip the saucepan handles, stroke along the knives, spin the spatulas by their handles. He hasn’t cooked since they boarded the Waverider, hasn’t cooked for someone else in even longer; maybe this will help ground him a little until he’s ready to talk to Barry. Until then, he peels and chops and grates, and if it weren’t for Barry sitting there upsetting the olive oil into the bowl of shredded cheese and rushing to the sink to cough up Mick’s brand of beer and generally being adorable and infuriating and anxious all at the same time, Len could almost pretend that it was just another one of those rare evenings when both he and Mick were in a good mood and wanted to celebrate it.

Len expects Barry to be orgasmic over Mick’s pizza – he certainly was, every single time – but while Barry’s appreciative enough, his mind seems to be wondering. By the end of the meal, Mick seems to have calmed down enough to pick up on it. “My cooking not good enough for you, Scarlet?”

“What? No, it’s amazing, your food is amazing – I’m sorry – I’m just – curious about something. And I promise I won’t arrest you after you tell me. Off the record.”

Mick opens another bottle of beer. “Spit it out, then.”

“Just – why here?” Barry gestures around the safehouse. “I mean – you guys – are supervillains. Wouldn’t you have, like, a supervillain lair, with gadgets, and mementos from all your heists, and like, a giant safe with all your ill-gotten gains-”

Mick laughs. It’s a little sharp, a little rusty, and it could be because of the ridiculousness of Barry’s question or the way the plural “supervillains” just rolls off his tongue, but it’s still easily the most beautiful thing Len’s heard in months. “You’ve been watching way too many bad movies, kid,” Mick says amusedly. “I know Le – my partner – was a bit of a drama queen, but living in places like that is exactly how the people we stole from lost their shit in the first place. We stash our stuff somewhere safe and keep a lot of these places on hand. Makes it easier to lie low or move on, depending on where the heat’s coming from.”

Barry nods thoughtfully, then asks another crime-related question. Mick starts talking again and this time he doesn’t stop. Len hovers around, watching the beer bottles making their way from the fridge to the arms of the couch and marvels at how carefully Barry leads Mick into recounting everything he’s kept bottled up, the old pain from the fire, the new agonies of the Waverider, and everything in between. The more Mick talks, the less he drinks, and the more his eyes lose that dull, angry glow and let emotion leak through. By the time he’s talked his way to the Oculus explosion, they’re glimmering in a way they haven’t in public for at least twenty years.

It breaks Len’s heart, but Mick needs this. He needs this badly.

“He kissed Sara,” Mick’s saying, cradling an empty bottle against his chest with both hands. “She told me, after, and I thought maybe that was his way of sending me a message, telling me she could have my back. But she didn’t. And Haircut didn’t. And Amaya, I guess she tries, but she doesn’t get it. How could she?”

There’s a bright glitter in Barry’s green eyes. He doesn’t say anything.

“And all of them, they’ve forgotten he ever existed, all obsessed with their heroics, and if I tell them – they’ll just use it against me, like everything else.” Mick puts the bottle down next to the couch. “Without him, they don’t really care if I’m around or not.”

Len expects Barry to protest, to defend the team’s good intentions, to say that there’s good in Mick, too, but Barry does none of those things. Instead, he sets aside the plates which have accumulated on the seats of the couch, scoots over – and wraps his arms around Mick. Len braces for a wave of jealousy to run through him, more powerful by far than the one which Amaya’s sneaking glances at Mick provoke, braces for Mick to throw Barry back across the room, which will hurt that already bleeding heart of his far more than any part of his speed-healing body – but neither of these things happen. Instead, Mick freezes for a moment, then wraps his own arms around Barry’s skinny frame and holds him close. And all that grips Len is blinding, overwhelming relief.

When Barry predictably drifts off – the kid’s had a long fight too, and not a whole lot of sleep – Mick looks down at him for a moment, and Len can see the struggle on his face, the confusion, the exhaustion, the guilt, the relief. Eventually, the need to have someone else by his side again, someone who isn’t wishing he were someone else, even if it’s just for the night, appears to win, and Mick stretches out on the couch, pulling Barry into his side. It used to be a squeeze for him and Len, and Barry’s an inch, maybe two, taller, but Mick doesn’t seem to care. He stares blankly into the table lamp over Barry’s head, his greying beard blending into Barry's dark hair, automatically thumping his back whenever he lets out a little speedster-snore, and it takes a while, but eventually sleep swallows him too.

The safehouse is quiet. According to the screen of Barry’s phone, which is lying on the kitchen counter and lights up every now and then with silent messages from the superhero squad, it’s past one in the morning. The occasional car blows past outside, but otherwise there’s only the slow drip of a faucet which Mick never got around to fixing, or the occasional creak and hiss of pipes which Len secretly loved and missed. Later, but not by much, Oliver, Sara and Amaya will try to hero their way in here while Felicity and Cisco fight over who gets to give the directions and so miss the traps and tricks which Len rigged for intruders on the night before he and Mick first set up here. The ensuing chaos will wake Mick and Barry, and then there will have to be explanations and things will get even messier and Len doesn’t know what will happen. But for now, they sleep.

They haven’t forgotten him. Even if Mick’s cheeks didn’t hollow in pain, even if he didn’t clutch Barry closer, even if Barry didn’t sniff in his sleep and burrow deeper into Mick’s charred jacket, Len would know this, because he’s still here. He knows that the day he disappears from here because no one in the world grieves for him hasn’t even thought of approaching the horizon of time yet, and he’s selfishly grateful, because he needs that time to figure out how to get back to them. But until then, until he can come back, he can be grateful for this, even if it doesn’t last beyond this night.

Because for now, Mick’s not alone in his grief and neither is Barry, and Len is just that bit less lonely in his death. And maybe he can’t hug Mick the way he used to, and maybe he can’t hug Barry the way he’s always wanted to, but they can hold each other.

It’s not what he wanted for any of them, but for now, it’s enough.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First of all, a huge thank you to everyone who read the first part of this fic/ left comments/ wanted a follow-up and an ever bigger apology for the late response. Crazy internet issues, ugh...anyhow, here you go, much fluff, and I hope you guys enjoy it! Here's to Coldwave!

"We're not talking to him."

"We're not?"

"No." Mick is glowering. "We're going out for barbecue."

"But- the barbecue's in his honour- and he'll get hungry-"

"I don't care. There's pizza in the oven if he wants it. Now come on, we're gonna be late and I told Cisco I'd be there to make sure stuff gets burned right."

"But-"

Mick kicks Barry's legs out from under him, scoops him deftly into his arms before his head hits the floor and marches out the front door with the air of a man who will not be stopped. Barry struggles a little, but the look on his face clearly indicates that he lacks the strength of character to resist Mick's manhandling and whatever other strengths he has seem to have deserted him.

Len isn't judging. He has the same responses to Mick's manhandling and he's not the least bit ashamed.

Mick, however, hasn't manhandled Len since he got back from being dead. He hasn't done much of anything with Len, really. He'd hugged him once, tight enough to make him regret having lungs again for a moment, spent three hours cooking a feast that lasted half the day, because in Mick's eyes death and the loss of a body somehow equals starvation, and then opened the door to reveal Lisa, who he'd somehow managed to text in the middle of stuffing a fifteen pound turkey, and who'd ridden halfway across the country on the golden Ducati Len had got for her thirtieth birthday. There had been much weeping and yelling and throwing of things, because that’s Lisa, and Mick had watched from his favorite chair, looking at Len like he couldn't look enough.

Barry, of course, had taken one look at Len, gone back to sleep, and come crashing down the stairs ten hours later yelling at Mick about finally starting to hear Len’s voice in his head. In his defense, he’d been awake for two days straight dealing with the latest meta, and perhaps appearing beside the bed and staring until someone woke up hadn't been the best way for Len to return from the dead to two emotionally devastated people. Barry'd just thought he'd finally cracked; Mick, however, had known he couldn't possibly crack anymore.

Then again, watching Barry realize both that he was buck naked and that Lisa was in the room was hilarious.

However, after they've all gotten through the first round of shock and joy and thankfulness and tears and hugs and constant touching because both Mick and Barry seem to think with their hands and right now their hands are grabby, Mick starts glowering and he doesn't stop. He cooks feasts for the gods in lieu of meals, he pushes open a door in the upstairs corner of the townhouse into which he and Barry had moved a year ago to reveal what can only be described as a Len-shrine, he drops a diamond the size of his fist next to Len while he's taking a nap on the couch-but he won't come near him, he won’t let him out of his sight, and he won't talk to him. He won’t let Barry talk to him either. “I think he’s a little pissed at you for dying,” whispers Barry when they finally get a moment alone just before he’s hauled off to the barbecue. Mick’s down in the basement fetching the heat gun; he’s made some adjustments specifically for this occasion. Caitlyn was very specific that they not cause another accelerator explosion, even if Len has returned from the void.

“You know, I hadn’t noticed,” says Len. What? He’s a little tetchy. He’d forgotten how much having a forty-four year old body – well, almost forty six now, he supposes – actually sucks, given all the crap it’s been subjected to, and that’s without the constant feeding that has Len feeling a little puffy. He really doesn’t need one of Mick’s moods right now.

He could really do with one of Mick’s massages, though.

Len’s distracted enough by the thought of Mick’s massages that he almost misses the sound of Mick’s motorbike charging out of the garage and into the street, but not quite; the crash of trash cans flying into next door’s fence and Barry’s yowl of anguish is pretty unmistakable. Len listens as the roar of the bike dies away in the direction of Star Labs and then hauls himself off the couch with some difficulty. He has at least two hours to kill until Mick and Barry get back. Deciding to forego Mick’s pizza – because, again, he has only two hours before Mick makes him eat the barbecued contents of the hamper he will no doubt bring home, and he and indigestion don’t get on – he pads upstairs. He realizes as he goes that he never thought he’d end up living in a house with actual carpet on the stairs. Or neighbours with fences of the non-barbed-wire variety. Or…any of this, really.

Because nothing is quite the same, and he’s the one who’s been hovering around watching all of it happen; for him the challenge lies in getting used to the fact that he can actually walk up the stairs instead of waiting for Mick or Barry to do it so he could drift along behind them. But for Mick and Barry…it’s been one and a half years since they saw him, a year since they decided that staying together was the only way either of them were going to survive losing Len. In that year, Len’s watched them battle for two kinds of freedom. The first was from their superhero identities, from the missions that wouldn’t stop coming, from the teams which took them for granted. He’d rejoiced, as much as he was able to rejoice without being able to digest tequila, on the night that Mick and Barry declared to their respective teams that they were taking a well-deserved break. For once Barry moved at speed for something other than saving the world; by the time their two weeks was up, he and Mick had moved into the townhouse where they now lived, which made it a lot easier to escape the storm that broke when they revealed their arrangement. Cisco and Caitlyn had been the easiest to convince that Barry needed some time off, that Barry was going to have a hard time coming back from this, which was surprising considering who was responsible for Caitlyn’s first kidnapping and the maiming of Cisco’s brother. The Wests had been a little more difficult; it wasn’t until Barry had threatened to disappear in the middle of the night with Mick and meant it, that they stopped lurking just beyond the low garden hedge. Eventually, slowly, they’d figured out that Leonard Snart had been something to Barry which only Mick Rory could understand, and more importantly, that separating them wouldn’t just leave Central City in ashes, but would deprive them of a son, a brother, a superhero.

As for the second freedom, the freedom which Mick and Barry needed from their past and their mistakes and their shared grief…well, that had been a little harder to watch.

Mick and Barry had shared the one bedroom right from the start, curled around each other tightly enough to hold Mick’s nightmares at bay and stop Barry’s latest bad habit of running in his sleep, but it hadn’t been until three weeks later, in the middle of a thundering fight about how one of the unsupervised fires Mick had set had spread dangerously close to where Barry was on one of the few missions he’d agreed to, that Barry had speeded over to Mick mid-sentence and kissed him hard on the lips. Mick had frozen, jerked back, and it was then that Len, watching a new wave of hurt and shame and heartbreak crash through Barry’s eyes, had figured out that this was what he wanted for both of them, had realized that the emotion roaring in his ears when Mick surged in again and returned the kiss, pulling Barry into his arms, Flash suit and all, was pure relief. When they finally made it to the bedroom, he’d expected to disappear, because, well, he knew from experience that when Mick was kissing you like that you certainly weren’t going to be thinking at all, let alone mourning a dead man. But he hadn’t. And he didn’t know if he was glad, or relieved, or what that said about him. He just knew that by the time Barry and Mick had both passed out in each other’s arms, clutching each other even tighter, he’d been more determined than ever to get back to them. Because if he was still here, even after all that, if he was still in their minds…he couldn’t leave them alone.

Of course it had taken a year. A year during which Mick learned never to wake Barry up without coffee in his hands unless he wanted Barry to fall asleep again before he’d even reached the street, during which Barry learned to stop wearing a shirt around the house already, a year in which Joe West never visited. Iris had, though, once she’d gotten over the combined shock of Barry being bisexual, over her, and cohabiting with the supervillain widower of another supervillain. Mick was never going to like her, but because she still meant something to Barry, he shoved a box of cupcakes at her once in a while and Barry had actually put on weight, so she was appeased, if not entirely joyous. 

And now Len was back from the dead, and she was going to have to deal with the fact that Barry was now cohabiting with a supervillain and his resurrected supervillain husband.

That is, if he wanted to.

Len stops dead in front of the door of the Len-shrine. He’s been so busy getting himself back to the land of living that he hasn’t given any consideration to what might happen if Barry and Mick didn’t want him in their relationship. Well, maybe not Mick, once Mick’s actually talking to him again, because Mick hasn’t stopped wanting Len in thirty years, but Barry…Len never found out if Barry felt more than admiration for him, and he’s learned the hard way that you never, ever, make assumptions about the important things.

He opens the door and walks into the treasure trove which the two of them built up in his memory, most of it stolen, because Mick; twenty-strand necklaces, all diamonds and sapphires, every painting involving snow and ice to ever adorn the walls of a museum, ninja stars, dusty bottles from Chicago bootleggers, enough exotic blue fabric to create a hundred parkas, and mementos from era to era and goes over to the shelf of photographs in the back, reaching for one tucked behind a picture of Lisa at her first skating competition.

Just about everything Len and Mick were wearing in that photo had been stolen, from the suits to the shoes to the pinkie ring on Len’s finger; Mick’s knuckles were turning blue from where he’d punched out a homophobic witness; the photo’s a little lopsided because one of Lisa’s stilettos had no heel from where she’d kicked said witness all the way down the aisle. But Barry would have known none of that the night he’d been in here dropping off some of Cisco’s original plans for the first cold gun and knocked the frame off the shelf. All he would have seen, standing there with trembling hands, was the light in their eyes, the light that had been missing from Mick’s eyes since the Oculus exploded.

Mick’s still wearing the ring, though, and sometimes Len wonders if Barry hates him a little for that – for dying, first of all, for being the reason he was never the only thing on Mick’s mind – Len knows, after all, that he wasn’t – if the emotion that kept him tied to Barry was not grief and longing, but anger and resentment, if right now, behind his sympathy Barry hates him for coming back, for turning upside down the life which he and Mick had only just begun to believe they could have together.

Len sighs. One emotionally distraught man at a time. First he’ll get Mick to actually talk to him, and then he’ll sound out Barry.

As predicted, they come back two hours later, with a hamper only slightly smaller than the Waverider’s jumpship smothering Barry on the back of the bike. Len hasn’t had barbecue for a while, so he eats everything Mick puts in front of him docilely. Barry regales Len with tales of how Cisco nearly got fried after his attempt to soup up Mick’s old grill ruined five perfectly good racks of ribs, and Mick’s relaxed enough to crack a grin once or twice. After the meal, however, he disappears into the garage and doesn’t come back until past eleven, once Barry’s yawned his way into bed.

Len watches him disappear up the stairs, then settles more comfortably on the couch. Couch is an understatement; what with Barry and Mick and their terrible taste, the thing is a cross between a marshmellow and a warm snowdrift and looks like a colour-blind hairdresser’s poodle. The danger here is sinking into the cushions and never being found again. Clutching the plush arms of the couch just in case, because he had enough of that for two lifetimes, Len goes to sleep.

He’s yanked out of sleep and off the couch what seems like minutes later. The house is dark; Len lashes out on instinct, noting absently how sloppy his form has gotten, and Barry ducks. “Shit, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have shaken you – but I need you upstairs now!” Barry’s hair is sticking up all over the place and his pajamas have actual stripes on them – Len would do something impulsive, except that he can hear Mick yelling his name from upstairs and not at all in the wet-dream way.

He takes off up the stairs before Barry can flash him there, because puking and on fire is not how he wants to deal with this. He takes a left on the landing away from the Len-shrine and careens through the open bedroom door. The empty bed is a shambles of tangled blankets and pillows; Mick is on the floor by the window, rocking back and forth with his fists pressed into his eyes. “Lenny!” he bellows, and the sheer despair in his voice punches Len in the face harder than it ever did when he was watching this from beyond the Oculus explosion. “Lenny!”

“He hasn’t had one in months,” Barry says wretchedly from somewhere behind him. “And even when this happened every week I could get through to him but I can’t – I can’t reach him – I’m sorry -”

Instead of telling Barry that he knows all this and then having to explain how, Len throws himself to the ground in front of Mick and grabs his shoulders. “Mick! Mick, I’m here, dammit, look at me! It’s over, Mick, it’s over, look at me - ”

“No!” roars Mick, his hands pressed so hard into his eyesockets that Len’s afraid he’s going to do serious damage. “You’re not fucking real! You’re not here, you’ll never be here, you fucking died, so just leave me the fuck alone – I can’t deal with this, make it stop, Lenny – Lenny - ”

Len summons up all his strength, grabs Mick’s wrists and yanks them away from his face. His eyes stay shut, tears streaming from their corners as Mick starts to sob, choking on bits of words. He’s curling up, his shoulders hunching in on himself, and Len knows that if he lets him go on like this he’ll be unreachable for days, and someone’s going to get burned. “We do this the old fashioned way, then,” he murmurs, and then he belts Mick across the face.

Barry yelps. Mick’s eyes fly open. The dark brown of dry forest right before it’s lit on fire, they fix themselves on Len’s face, still brimming with tears. “Lenny?” he rasps cautiously. 

“Yes, you dolt,” says Len, because he was dead for a year and a half, not at finishing school. 

“You’re alive.”

“What gave me away?”

Mick tilts his jaw. “No hallucination I ever saw had such godawful form.”

Len feels a grin forming at the corners of his mouth. “Oh, come on, you know you love my form.” He drops his eyes suggestively to the seat of his pants and Mick laughs, a wet, incredulous sound. “It’s really me, Mick.”

Mick raises a hand and runs his hand down Len’s face. “I can’t believe…I can’t believe you’re here.”

“Well, you believed it enough to sell me out to Lisa, place me under house arrest, stuff me with enough food to survive Armageddon and give me worse silent treatment than you did when I stole your pudding in juvie,” recites Len. When Mick still doesn’t look convinced, he sighs, “Help me out here, Barry.”

Then he looks behind him. “Barry?”

Barry is still standing in the doorway, but he isn’t looking at them. “Yeah, Mick,” he says quietly. “You’re not hallucinating any more. Len’s really alive.” He raises his head and smiles at them, and the weight of the heartbreak in his eyes knocks all Len’s words right out of his head.

Mick frowns. “Scarlet,” he says. “Come here.”

Barry puts his head down and slinks forward until he’s close enough to drop down next to Mick, who stares at him for about ten seconds and then kisses him soundly. Barry melts into the kiss, but his eyes, when he opens them, are wide and confused. “Mick…?”

“Len’s alive,” Mick tells him. “That doesn’t mean I’m ever going to stop loving you.” Both Len and Barry suck in a breath and Mick turns to Len. “And you. Lenny, I know I’ve been pissed off at you for dying, but I never stopped loving you, either. Neither did Barry.”

Len’s head whips around. Barry’s as red as he was on the day the aliens came. “Thanks, Mick. Way to sell me out to the man I’ve been gone on since he blew up a train to get my attention.”

Len kisses him then, and Barry tastes better than he ever imagined, sweet and beautiful and just a little unpredictable underneath. When Barry reels back, now paler than Caitlyn Snow’s hair, Mick claims Len’s mouth and it tastes like home and you came back to me and I’m never leaving you again. 

The bed holds them all easily. Len pulls Barry into his arms and buries his head in Barry’s thrumming chest; Barry edges forward until they’re almost nose to nose and stares at Len like he can’t stop, his fingers tracing his hairline. Mick moulds himself along Len’s spine, his arms around Len’s waist; his lips find the back of Len’s head and press against it. “Love you, Lenny,” he whispers, the words warm at the back of Len’s neck.

“Love you too, Len,” Barry breathes, his lips just barely touching Len’s. 

“Still mad at you,” Mick rumbles, on the edge of sleep. “Even if you did come back from the dead.”

Len opts not to mention that little deal he made with a certain Legion of Doom in order to accomplish said resurrection. That’s not important right now. Because he’s finally here. He’s finally here, they’re finally together, and all the pieces fit, everyone’s complete. They’ve made it back. They’re okay.

He’s just going to enjoy this a little longer.


End file.
